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Tuesday, April 29, 2014

`Fill In Some Blank Corner of the Human Canvas'

“Since
words are spoken by everyone, the custody of language is a sufficient
responsibility in itself for a poet. To inscribe in language some hitherto
unexpressed area of experience – to fill in some blank corner of the human
canvas – is worthwhile; to speak the small truths that feed into the bigger
Truth. Also, the aspiration of poetry is always towards the creation of
something permanent in language: in our era of the disposable, the ephemeral,
this is counter-cultural – as, indeed, is the fact that genuine poetry
transcends the blinkered vision of the journalistic present; it inhabits the
present, but it is also very much in dialogue with the inherited forms and the
great voices of the past.”

The
words are Dennis O’Driscoll’s, the Irish poet who died on Christmas Eve 2012 at
age fifty-eight (he was born on New Year’s Day 1954). In a working life reminiscent
of Charles Lamb’s, O’Driscoll joined the Office of the Revenue Commissioners in
Dublin at age sixteen, specializing in “death duties, stamp duties, and customs,”
and remained there for almost forty years. In his memoir-essay “Sing for the Taxman,” O’Driscoll
says, “I have always regarded myself as a civil servant rather than a `poet’ or
`artist’ – words I would find embarrassing and presumptuous to ascribe to
myself.” If only more writers shared his common sense and humility.

The
passage quoted at the top is from a 1998 interview collected in Troubled Thoughts, Majestic Dreams (Gallery
Press, 2001). Poets – any writers – as stewards of language, caretakers of our
inherited tongue, is a happy notion. So too, the writer’s responsibility for
filling in “some blank corner of the human canvas.” In Quality Time (Anvil, 1997), O’Driscoll collects “The Bottom Line,”
a mock-epic of fifty eleven-line stanzas recounting life as a low-level manager,
not an anti-capitalism screed as the title might suggest. Here is the sixth
section:

“A
life of small disappointments, hardly

meriting
asperity or rage, a fax

sent
to the wrong number, an engagement

missed,
a client presentation failing

to
persuade: nothing you can’t sweat off

at
gym or squash. But, in the dark filling

of
the night, doubts gather with the rain

which,
spreading as predicted from the west,

now
leaves its mark on fuscous window panes;

and
you wait for apprehensions to dissolve

in
the first glimmer of curtain light.”

The
kinship with Larkin is apparent, and the final lines recall “Aubade” (“In time
the curtain-edges will grow light.”) There’s sympathy in both poets for the common,
put-upon man, dutiful middle-class men of middling accomplishments, not
working-class heroes. In the next paragraph of the interview quoted earlier, O’Driscoll
says:

“My
belief is that if you look after the language, then the politics will look
after itself. If you take the care and trouble to represent things precisely as
you perceive them, literally and imaginatively, you will have discharged any
obligation to society which you may have. To arrogate to yourself some larger
role as seer or clairvoyant is to succumb to a deluded megalomania of a kind
which is endemic in the literary world.”

No
utopian blather, just uncommon common sense from an unlikely source -- a poet. In
Long Story Short (Anvil, 1993), O’Driscoll
recalls the remarkable events of December 1989 in “Cult of Personality.” Normally,
prose poems trigger anaphylaxis in this reader, but this one is witty and systematically
crafted, like a syllogism. The first five sections recount the careers of Nicolae
(“He published 17 books the year before he died.”) and Elena (“Her experiments
took human, social, architectural forms.”) Ceaușescu, the Communist despots of
Rumania who were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989. Three days
earlier, Samuel Beckett had died in Paris at age eighty-three. Here is the
sixth section of O’Driscoll’s poem:

“There
are authors everywhere who, given the chance, would monopolise all available
paper for their books; who would love the billboards at airports to display
their words, the refashioned main thoroughfares to carry their names. Negative
reviews are amassed like hit lists. Rave reviews are ghost-written by
themselves Writing is their power struggle.”

And
the final section:

“Samuel
Beckett shied from publicity, hated to be photographed, shunned media
attention. His obituary in The Times
was printed alongside Nicolae Ceaușescu’s. Beckett’s photo was the larger of
the two.”

1 comment:

I often wish that someone would discuss what it means to be a poet or writer in a small country compared to what it is to be one in a very large and powerful one. Once when I was in my early 20's, I camped in the yard of an Irish playwright who was engaged to a woman I knew. A notable sculptor showed up with two very young poets (both men) in tow--some day I'll come across my diary of that trip and find out who they were, perhaps. I thought it the most wonderful, astonishing thing that these established artists were bringing young people along, traveling with them, introducing them to figures of their arts world. I often thought of it later on, back in my great big country...